A French-American meeting took place in the HEC Alumnis offices, for a very special and thrilling conference on the life now with computers. Organized by different groups (Harvard France, HEC International Dev, Stanford club of European leaders) and framed by several meetings like this with different topics, we had an interesting demonstration for the full room within: “the impacts of computers on our world”. Great teasing for tremendous steps, we forgot to remember, as time shifted so quickly.

A new journey for the future, or must I say, our now standard life, since industry, energy and engines shifted to information, digits and computers. First there was mechanics, engineering and lots of complicated, tough and sheer materials. Built with hardcore and efforts, industry was a high rise work, human resourced and driven by process, maps and building lines. Hard times for a craft and machinery environment…Some started to think about another way of building the future, tempted by laziness or innovation oriented, there were large tracks for insights. Insights from the new revolution: digits.

Digits came from the electronic mindset, given into new materials with new growth opportunities. Digits started to shape skills, things, objects and re-create even up to process and the whole chain of building. Then was born the digital era and the computer invasion. From energy engines to information and computers, throughout 4 pillars like interfaces, algorithms, languages and machines, we totally erased mechanics with digits theory and computer science. The simple scope where “you put, you get” is over by the fact that any input in the web right now open the whole world in a snapshot. Breathless, isn’t it?

We never anticipated this awesome revolution, and I think even researchers, at that times, didn’t know what kind of issue it could be. They ignored the whole and extraordinary fields of modernity we could then step into. Even education and physiological parts of brain seem today have changed, with a new ongoing learning, where you can get the answers nearly before the questions. Considering the new race for datas, speed, networks and rates, it will stay a main revolution up to the education system where digital shifted the way we learn: online courses, ongoing lessons and wikis, even our brain changed the way it stores information. While we’re able to have in one click a huge mass of knowledge, how long is it useful to store and hold datas in our brain? This is probably in fact the most visible change with our daily life on tablets, smartphones or whatever screen…How could we stand now without computers?
We saw some thrills about the next wave, were objects will contain their own self computer inside and will be able to stand as some “complex self systems” that will deal with humans, with intellection, interactive and time-real conversation. But you already know where is the “off” button, don’t you?

Yes. The thing everybody finally searches all his life, believing in the new Graal. I agree with the incredible effects of happiness on personal life, behavior, social interaction, business relations or any kind of relation though. But it’s all but arithmetic or automatic device you turn on or off, as you want to. Happiness must not be considered as a final goal, but more as a lifestyle, in the simpliest steps of life. We have all daily opportunities to measure, value and share “samples of happiness” with any situation: short talk, lesson, meeting, dinner, party…

Waiting for happiness can appear to be too long, but including it in each gesture, posture or action gives you an incredible experience of instant pleasure and valuable time. Not focusing on the single result can bring you a more pleasant “fly”, trip to the next steps of your life. And the way you drive and lead your action is really important as a gift for any of your interactions: be pleased without justifying with anyone in sharing knowledge, information and wisdom.

Now, it’s time to care about our happiness and share whenever it’s possible. Because we all deserve it…

Everybody sees Happiness as an incredible quest, without seeing what’s in front of us. We always search for what we don’t have, forgetting to enjoy the daily simpliest pleasures. It seems to be a real crisis of happiness, while we forgot all we had, as little children, who themselves care for any few thing to come and bite life breathless. We all claim for more, but never organize us to understand, appreciate and consume the situations that could help us to get higher happiness. We just put it on doom, mischance or broken life, never source on ourselves to know us better and find the light inside. It must not be the fault of life. Or others. It might be our fault, just forgetting the meaning that we really put in our life. Consumption became a powerful exposition for fulfill our fitness indicators, and expose others, in order to seduce, capture or trick the game. It must stay pleasure first, as we don’t buy any good but values, brands or attributes…Marketing gurus got their own skills to show you in a mirror, that doesn’t reflect you anymore. We have to seed the “be” against the “have” and be inspired of it.

This summer, I’ve been really inspired, reading two books, under the hot sun of Tunisia. Happier from Tal Ben-Shahar and The Dip, little handbook from Seth Godin. One explaining path to more happiness, with lots of stories, examples and concepts, simply with bright exercises to follow a coherent line into the tale and being able to apply few rules, quite immediatly. I’ve noticed, through this awesome story, the underscored aspects of having in mind the two terms of appreciate pleasure: short-term shots, necessary because they are the fuel of each day we spend, and the deeper elements that shape the “meaning” of a whole life, used as guides, goals or long term sense. And to link both, we have to make a work on ourself to share and balance the benefits, resources and efforts to build something relevant and sustainable. We link then to the other guide by Seth G. about “quitting”, leaving something in our life, on several motivations: fear, doubt, too much effort or energy, difficulty, no more envy, mindset change or whatever that could make us shift. And that’s when this period comes, after the beginner’s chance or the one-shot short-term pleasure, that one must make choice: go on or leave? Who never thought about it or being confronted to a major choice in his/her life?

What does it mean? refusing happiness at the threshold? no pain, no gain?

And I found some correlative coincidences in the fear of the dip and the fact of “consuming” happiness, burning it too fast, without any plan, goal or forecast for meaning and without giving a long-term sense to life. Starting, beginning in something, diving into new experience, company, life need a snap of vision, envy, chance and motivation, but probably less energy because of novelty and curiosity. We all know how to get a small shot of pleasure, in simple few things we can allow us daily with meetings, close and personal thoughts and dedicated moments. But the real problem is to “process” them to make them scalable, sustainable and part of something bigger: goal. A kind of envision with steps to cross, the “complete estimated and fully hope” way of your life to be discovered. But how get to it while you don’t organize the way, the steps? If you consume all your energy, focused on short-term pleasure, when dip is coming, because it always does after a period of “trial”, the feeling of doubt, mistrust or despair will appear. Some will get from this, with lots of energy and target to grow the hard curve. But many won’t, because they will miss the whole vision of “sense” for their life.

But when you take time to set goals for achievements, giving you a “reason-to-live” beyond, you start to draw something more clear and valuable, all along the path…This gives you courage, force and energy, and maybe you won’t spend any time in the dip, surfing on pleasure, all along the steps. I tried to represent the way I figure it, on the second graph. Imagine you have a stairway, where each step is a new challenge, hurdle or thing to achieve, and for each step you will get all your attention to feel, learn and get all the lessons from: you’ll get more profitable time, enjoyable and memorize a lot more than if you don’t get any attention at all. But moreover, you will touch to a higher level of short-term pleasure and you’ll earn it forever. This is the principle of having a far away goal, while spending time to appreciate each part of the path to go there. While consuming your short-term pleasure, you’ll touch a well being level like a trigger, and function with a “ratchet effect”. What you earnt is forever, speaking about welfare level. And that’s a real funny way to share and balance between easy approach to solve daily stuffs, learn and feel, then dreaming of the big picture that makes sense for you. And the best way to get rid of this “haunting” dip, that demands so much efforts, pain and questions for you to go on…

The best you plan for the future, the best you can appreciate all the strong steps to go there, and feel all the energy of passing the difficulties of life. “Success calls success” we could tell, like a process circle that gives you motivation, sense but joy in the action. Because a kind of “rat race”, refusing pleasure now for hoping it later is to ascetic, take time to stare the whole story, imagining how you could get tot he peak, enjoying all the phases, encounters and lessons that make the process. “If there’s a goal, there’s a way”, I could add “an enjoyable way”.

Don’t quit, ever, just have an enjoyable trip, reachable goals, reliable and fulfilling milestones, and trust for you to take right decisions with insightful and tuitions mindset. An eye on the horizon goal, the other on daily feelings. You’d better start now…

Driving the change with happiness produces better results in the long term for brands: products, service level, employees involvement and motivation, learning scale, knowhow footprint. Some could say theres’s some “disturbing tricks”, considered sometimes too framed, complicated, as “sect” behaviors. But none. In the spirit of “meaning” and quest for everybody to a “sense of life“, allowing for the luckiest, a perfect stability between career, family, entertainment and in heritage, there’s not only “chance”. If we look at poursuit of happiness, as a never ending story to keep motivation, willingness to learn and share and a desire for improvement, we can perfectly get the essence of this weird process:

things become boring as we reach them ; just like collectors who keep fever until they get the last piece of their collection…and depress then after

the emotion is intense while the action is, but step down just after the success. It’s really strange, but it is. Ask for champions who won, and then…kind of baby blues, in someway?

to keep the sheer energy, innovation with happiness must be considered as a never ending process, always searching for new tracks for improvement, challenging the service level and beat our own results. An impossible quest? Not sure, because passion is an awesome fuel for everyone…

In a special bigup for this delicious tale and stories inside “Happier”, from Tal Ben-Shahar, the first impressions were that the race for happiness in itself, doesn’t mean anything if we see it as a collection, without a framed life. Drawed like a coherent way to discover each day, new experiences, surprises with rituals maybe, we have to be convinced by the special force of “sense”. If we try to compare happiness in relative ways with others, we lose our mind with bad thoughts about jalousy, greed and deny. That’s not a positive attitude which don’t enable opening stories with others. He meant and gave perspective to happiness (and quest for) in underlining the “way”, the “process”, as a source of happiness itself. In other words, “don’t focus only on the result, but feel and appreciate the way to go there”. A perfect and slow ongoing way to learn and give a chance to any milestone, any few snap thing that “makes” the way.

And I found a reason to link this particular and hectic approach, to innovation, like a process.

I tried here to compare the acquisition and race for happiness, with models and behaviors confronted with choices of innovation, with two axes: return/pleasure on short term and pleasure/return on long term.

First Quadrant : “Rat Race”…

…means focus on long term pleasure, never considering the way/process as interesting in getting/giving pleasure, as an ongoing flowing action. It supposes cash, strong settlements and long R&D windows of development, but rare entries on misc. activities in diversification. Devise could be “one day…maybe”, refusing elusive deals facing them prefering investing on framed, stronged and loud process. This could be pharmas’ models for example, confronted with security and sanity process, and the necessary R&D involvements. They like “hard innovation” but could refuse easy one…

Second: Slow Followers…

…will slow the flow, with a “no…no…” attitude, to secure cash and strategy. Focused on past success, they mean to wait the future window of opportunity…staring at competition, long after “crossing the chasm“. They often do one thing at-the-time, but stare at anything that moves, to create a perfect control tower, safe. They can draw lessons from the past, but are not really sure if chance, random or anything else that way, could be the exact final decisive point. They also make the mass-market coming and can lower the costs of delivering, by industrializing the mainstream approach. Not really sexy, but necessary. Me-too products for settled consumers, and old processing because “nothing worths it…”. Some behaviors bending on “too much realistic” and not enough disruptive mindset.

Third: Shooters…

…Everybody has ever known one in his own life: something/someonethat/who, can “woooot” you up, and make the spark in your eyes. A gun, a shooter, a big buzz. But once, only once. Focused on fashion, day-to-day, hedonism and sheer short-term gain. A star, who will never keep the distance. And that’s all the difference: big brands don’t make only big PR/buzz around products, services or deliverings. They stand and hold a position, for yesterday, now and tomorrow. Using your energy to bring news and buzz, will build a instant cash good deal, but doesn’t set you as a strong innovator. A lots of resources are managed and satisfied in the distance: customers, employees, machines, built-in processes…And as already described, running for an immediate goal, makes you in the blues and feel depressed, just after the victory. Like Champions…of one snap instant.

Last, but not least, of course, according to me, the most sustainable and sharable shape of innovation: I called “The HappInovators”,…

…as they make a perfect exercise between goals to achieve together, and ways to proceed. Exploring radical shifts yes, but keeping concentrate and realistic about the ability to make the change happen. the organization in small cells, with maximum collaborative spirit, turned into energy. The energy for being able to think “why do I do this (like I do it)?”, several times in an ongoing process until the why is irrelevant. But not before. The spirit of feeling, appreciate all the milestones leading to result, learning from them but having joy, tears, hurdles too to print the moment. Doing nothing for nothing, as each case and stone must be the opportunity to rule something for the future, allowing the company to rise faster tomorrow, and to innovate easily. Talent management has not to be hold anymore because the spirit of “doing things happen”, lead them to think out-of-the-box and boost themselves all the time. They are on scene at each moment and on the lights. Why consider some talents more than others as the whole part is a talents building site? And why should I consider driving innovation in happiness? Because customers could feel it in your service, deliverings and brand. Because all your talents will be really involved as never, almost spending much costs on motivation tools or controlling. Because disruption comes when you put all the environment ready to make it come. Because you won’t choose between “today” and “future” anymore, you’ll manage the perfect balance between both, allocating resources as well. Because you’ll go to work (or any step you can transpose this process), with smile on your face. And spreading it, will overcome your results and the buzz for your entity.

Plant seeds of happiness is more than plant: it gives you the better (pacific) weapon to compete much closer and quicker, with the participation of the whole company. Training sessions for employees to come will make a better place to work, live and deliver…Saw that famous case about Zappos‘ story? Just in case…

I remember economics lessons with game theory, thinking everything was linked and causaly dependant, with other’s decisions. An awesome ocean of decisions for who want to bet, play and guess about some kind of destiny. Destiny that can worth millions of money, and write a whole history.

Prowling in the deep tracks of social web drive us to some unknown discoverings, that could be helpful to “think out of the box” and reborn some innovation. Hazard encounters, thematic speech and exchanges build our mindset for new reflexions. And that must exist now, to fuel the future. Even if it’s “only” tools, networks and fields, the path to social encounters, crossroads to information and access to knowledge means that there’s a kind of strategy, that could be reworked again and again. While lots of companies still don’t know which stategy is right or wrong, and wait for the first mover to come to follow tracks, mathematics of Nash equilibrium say us that a decision has a price: a price to pay, a price to receive, according to our choice.

This figure shows quickly how brands/companies (eg A and B), fight for a strategy move, and wonder each other decision, while they don’t have any information of other intentions. You’ll see that according to choices done, the expenses and revenues are not obvious to be equal…We make the hypothesis that each company can’t communicate and tell the other his intention (it would be illegal consensus, you know…a forbidden behavior in business world). It’s the business game, not only a fake matrix, every day, companies bet about which competitor is going to move, and which decision each is gonna take. Thrills, risks and grinding faces. One way to escape is for sure invest and create an free ocean of playing, enlarging the value levels or creating new levels of service for existing key factors: going wide far, to create a blue ocean. This allows to take decision considering the competition field and create new rules, win new customers or draw a new market.

And networks? Did you ever wonder how information flow in the “social web” and the contact network? Can we make parallels and comparisons with the decisions taken in business matrix, so far. Do I have to accept this new “friend” and if yes, what will it change in the spread of my network and access to new segments of knowledge? And if I say no, what will I miss, avoiding me from new informations, that could increase my competitive advantage…?

Not a game…Not really sure. Life is a game, business is a game, rules for sure, rules to come. Still, we have to trust our sheer pulses to make sense, out of these “matrix”. Because life with rules doesn’t mean “only” matrix and decisions are often taken without any relevant and concrete bases…Yes it’s true, according to serious players…there’s sometimes no evidence for decision making, and there’s still a large ocean for impressions, feelings and thanks for a long time…

According to the famous “extinction timeline“, here, we bet on some disappearing periods, and prepare sometimes to live just like if we were projected “on the other side”, through a time warp. Does it hurt? Sometimes yes, sometimes not, while there’s simply some hard fences that oblige us to renew lots of things in our lives.

Considering some pictured events and stuffs, some evidences area already there: facing threat of emptiness, humanity is then forced to innovate, to “survive” or adapt to new style/way of life. Thinking now of living without TV or web, is probably real, accepted from few, but is meaningless for the bulk. And rise of such new ways of information or entertainment has been made with fall of other previous modes.

Thinking about all these vanished empires, technologies, and seeing the rythm gearing up’, why couldn’t it exist another parallel world, where, like black holes, born lots of derivate ways of doing progress. Trust we must, trust we doubt, but meanwhile, it seems that things that disappear, may be recreated in others mass of pure creation, kind of “loud and pure essence of brain work”. That is to say, “nothing is lost, but everything has to being transformed”: like gas into water after cooling, or water into gas before in warming it.
And these transformation may not be visible for us, in upper level dimensions, starting with fourth, time, and lots of after, leading us to such questions like: if I can’t see it or be a witness, is it that it’s not true, real, or is it that it overtake our imagination and concrete mind?

I always want to believe in the “unbelievable”, because, like innovation in companies, try and search drive us to unchain the creation power and nothing can’t prove us, as we can believe in other dimensions and what science still ignores. We still need some “endless searchers” to be pioneers toward new worlds and new trends.
Should we imagine that, because a new disruptive model comes, old methods disappear? not necessary and not automatic I guess, while old can be transformed, switched or merged, on the influence of other dimensions. In a way, something we can’t explain with traditional words, sentences, demonstrations or mathematics. But that’s not why we can’t that it doesn’t exist. Belief is the first step to explore time holes and other black parts of the universe. Why couldn’t it be there, why so much strange things in devil’s triangle? unexplained.

Definitely, I believe. I believe we have to stare and listen, much more than ever, to understand the change phases of our world, humanity and species. Technology will never replace vision and ability to be the witness of the lifetime cycles. And when disruptive ones appear, whole parts of old technologies seem to vanish, useless. It’s our inheritage, let’s take care of it…

Zapping was yesterday a concrete behavior, linked to our tv use. Jumping from channel to channel, an eye on remote control, the other on printed tv magazine, phenomena that exploded with arrival of satellite and cable tv, with several and diversified channels. With profusion, we had no choice to pay less attention to “carpe diem” instant, in the benefit of being champions of “more”. Last development fury and for VOD programs, prove that there is another level we just passed: holding time. The way we manage our relations is becoming a accurate exercise between, real friends, “interest” friends, randomized friends and others we could live without.
And I must admit, profusion of social web, lead to some equal behavior with so called “friends” encountered on social networks. There are even tools (machines!) to make work for you, in adding contacts you’ll never know…A kind of action, to feel someone important and being secured? not sure. Before social web, who, while reading this paper, had 2.000 real friends? who could manage with such? Yet, I didn’t find anyone, even if it was his job, with these characteristics…;-)

If social web brought ability for anyone of us to write, talk or read anything in various topics, it exists because of some who invest lots of time, to share best of the web. And if free model blew ever else model yet, it doesn’t mean that there is no value, and attention to be stared in such situation. Keeping attention and sustaining speach and sharing, doesn’t match with zapping mates, who collect friends and contacts as stickers. Some said, we can’t handle with more than 150 contacts, in a interesting and regular relationship. I know it’s really easy to have a huge audience, that can hear what you say, but is “hear” sufficient to hold a relation, that could be wealthy for everyone?

We, in fact are caught in a “hub” of information, encounterings, meetings, accelerated by technology, and in this context, high is the power of media to confuse ourself in an ocean of true/false conversations. We just have now to learn again to sort, make our mind of real kind of life, real values, real sense. Storm for the twirling RSS, won’t make us blind or deaf, if we make the effort of reflection, to value information, content and where it comes from: even if trust is an essential enlightening skill to cope with too much information, we usually and formerly now, don’t try to evaluate. 2.0 is the best way to viral any information (rumour or hoax), for free and for…fake too. Confronted with this, even if tools have risen so much, more than we can sometimes handle, man must control machine and channels: obligation is done to stare and watch what kind of receiver we want to be. Zapping is so light, too light for attention anyone must have, to warm sender, and to be a accurate receiver.

My parents did have a job for their life, I’ve myself had 5 until now, and my children are on the way to do several ones at a time…Time is running out and emergency to make the point and use the compass again to reborn and take time to think at where we go and what we do: give value, sense and aim to who we meet, and social places like blogs are great examples to give a new direction to argumentation. That’s what I try to do, for passion and attention to others, others we often can’t see for hedonism, egoism or unattention. And that’s not why there is too much networks, that we must waste relationship by zapping too fast, while there is relevant information to listen. Machine and techs not for what they ARE, but for what they DO. And fortunately we have brain and emotion, yet…